Dead authors' characters are there too. Dostoyevsky's great creation, Raskolnikov, is my friend. His inexorably sceptical and self-questioning nature is still very much in evidence. Even the way he signs his messages is in character: "(not really) yours (nor anybody else's), Rodja". I was privileged to receive a remarkable testimony from him recently, which provides a unique insight into his current state of mind. Still troubled, it seems - though he seems to have found some kind of peace on MySpace.

Being dead doesn't prevent a writer from entering into the spirit of MySpace. Charles Dickens has a rock track playing on his profile (Maybe Not by Chan Marshall). Jane Austen has put up some gorgeous wallpaper, while Hunter S Thompson gives his mood as yellow smiley "relaxed". Samuel Beckett even has a celebrity look-alike graphic, scoring a 72% likeness to himself. Shakespeare's MySpace blog reveals him to be a fan of The Sopranos. "Superb drama! Gallows humour too! What more could you want in great entertainment!??"

While some dead author and character profiles opt simply for a pasted-in bio, others enter imaginatively - and humorously - into the persona represented, ironically playing off internet conventions and culture. René Descartes, still thinking and therefore being on MySpace, has joyously embraced sloppy spelling and internet abbreviations: "Well, I'm a famous philospher, mathemitician, and scientist lol." In a similar vein, there's Hamlet's soliloquy, MySpace-style: "So ya, this video pretty much sums me up. I'm soooooo dramatic <<<<<33333 But I can be indecisive too :("

Sometimes the impersonation is extremely effective and witty. The profile page for Patricia Highsmith's creation Tom Ripley drolly omits to mention any of that character's homicidal activities. "I occupy my time by puttering in my garden, pursuing my (strictly amateur) painting, playing the harpsichord, and fine-tuning my French, German, and Italian language skills. I guess I could be called a dilettante."

What kind of person engages in these virtual exhumations? I discovered that one of my Dostoyevskys is actually Adrienne Davich, a journalist in her mid-20s who studied Dostoyevsky while in graduate school at Berkeley. She originally thought of doing a MySpace profile for Chekhov, whom she describes as "totally irresistible (sexually and otherwise)". In the end she decided Dostoyevsky had more MySpace potential: "I wanted to parody an author who appeared in my imagination as more of a character himself. I imagined Old Man Dostoyevsky, pissed because his predilection for internet gambling left him broke, annoyed because his wife couldn't think deep enough thoughts, and bored to the point that he used a MySpace blog to offer American pop culture criticism."

So why do it? We often feel that a great writer speaks for us. We see ourselves reflected in their fiction, and understand ourselves better as a result. Maybe it's just the reverse of the same coin that some people feel they can speak for a writer who has affected them so deeply. After all, neither the dead nor the fictional can speak for themselves.

Although the dead seem to attract more than their fair share of spam, most visitors to their pages are happy to honour them. One visitor to a Sylvia Plath profile comments, "You make me feel so much less alone"; another less graciously remarks "I wish the dead would stay dead". And the dead leave comments for the dead. Old friendships are revived, surprising new friendships forged. There's even the opportunity for settling old scores.

For living writer and MySpace entity Michael A Stusser, the presence of the dead on MySpace has proved an invaluable research tool. "I've often been asked how I actually contact the dead personalities in my book, The Dead Guy Interviews, and my answer is always that they've got pages on MySpace. It's how I met Edgar Allen Poe and the great Shakespeare."